MOUNTAIN-BARRIERS 



225 



stunted grass. The top is only barren stone. 

 The uppermost peak, which you have perhaps 

 seen from the desert a hundred miles away look- 

 ing like a sharp spine of granite shot up in the 

 air, turns out to be something more of a dome 

 than a spine a rounded knob of gray granite 

 which you have no difficulty in ascending. 



At last you are on the peak and your first 

 impulse is to look down. But no. Look up ! 

 You have read and heard many times of the 

 " deep blue sky." It is a stock phrase in nar- 

 rative and romance ; but I venture to doubt if 

 you have ever seen one. It is seen only from 

 high points from just such a place as you are 

 now standing upon. Therefore look up first of 

 all and see a blue sky that is turning into violet. 

 Were you ten thousand feet higher in the air 

 you would see it darkened to a purple-violet 

 with the stars even at midday shining through 

 it. How beautiful it is in color and how won- 

 derful it is in its vast reach ! The dome in- 

 stead of contracting as you rise into it, seems to 

 expand. There are no limits to its uttermost 

 edge, no horizon lines to say where it begins. 

 It is not now a cup or cover for the world, but 

 something that reaches to infinity something 

 in which the world floats. 



The look 

 upward at 

 the sky. 



The dark- 

 blue dome. 



